“Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here,” was a recurring chant, as people waved signs and cheered and cars and trucks sporadically honked their horns in support.

Steven McCasland, from Queens, New York, was holding a sign that said: “This village doesn’t want its idiot back.”

“He is an embarrassment to this city,” McCasland said of Trump. “We’re a city of compassionate people and he’s certainly not one of them.”

McCasland, 30, said he had been inspired to attend the protest after watching Trump sign an executive order on Thursday morning which will allow churches to endorse political candidates – a move some have criticized as threatening the separation of church and state.

Around 1,000 people marched towards the Intrepid, eventually being stopped one block north of the ship. They had met at DeWitt park in midtown Manhattan, and the proximity of the protest to a number of Trump’s landmark achievements will not have been lost on the president.

DeWitt park is one mile west of Trump Tower and just a few blocks from the Trump International Hotel and Tower. It is less than a mile south of the erstwhile Trump Place – a group of apartment buildings where residents successfully petitioned to have the Trump’s name removed in November.

Instead, Trump was due to meet Turnbull at the Intrepid, which now serves as a sea, air and space museum, at around 7.15pm, before giving a speech at 7.45pm. The event has been billed as a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, a naval battle waged by the US and Australia against Japan during the second world war.

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The president was expected to travel to his Trump National golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday evening.

Trump has lived in New York almost his entire life, but is extremely unpopular in the city. Just 18% of New Yorkers voted for him in the 2016 election, with 79% backing former New York senator Hillary Clinton. In Manhattan, where a number of buildings still bear Trump’s name, the president won just one electoral district – out of 1,210.

It costs the New York City police department $308,000 a day to protect Trump when he visits the city. The NYPD is currently spending between $127,000 and $146,000 a day to protect Melania and Barron Trump, who have continued to live in the city since Trump was inaugurated.